Grant Baldwin’s Blog

Welcome back for Part 4 of the series “My Goals for 2009.” In case you’re just joining us, you can check out Part 1 on the importance of setting goals, Part 2 on how to set goals or Part 3 on my business goals for 2009.

I first started writing down my goals in December, 2007 for the upcoming year and at the time, I only wrote down goals for my speaking business. It was my first year of business as a speaker, so I really took the time to think through and plan my business out for the year. But part way through the year, I started wondering why I didn’t take the time to set goals for my own personal life. It would seem like creating goals for my personal life would be just as important, if not more important than goals for my business.

So this year when I created my professional goals, I also took the time to create my personal ones. I mentioned in yesterday’s post regarding my business goals for 2009 that I create broad categories that help me to better structure my thinking and goal setting. Here are the categories for my personal goals: Physical, Financial, Family, & Personal. Here’s a further explanation for what goes in those categories…

• Physical – For most of us, we have the mental goal or New Year’s resolution to exercise more, eat less, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But unfortunately, that typically lasts up until about yesterday when you chowed down on leftover Christmas candy. When it comes to my health, I feel like I need to have something to be working at, so I’m not just doing it for the sake of doing it. So for me, I’ve made it a goal to run a 5k race, 10k race, and a half marathon. The idea for me is that in order to run any of these races, you HAVE to be in shape! You can’t just show up on race day and pull something like this off. So this gives me something to plan, prepare and train for. I’ve been reviewing training schedules as well as upcoming races and have plans to run my 5k in March, an 8k in April, a 10k in October, and a half marathon in November.
• Financial – Often times when people think of financial goals, they think simply of earning more money. But that’s not always the case (although I’ll take more money if you want to give me more!). While I do have a goal of how much I want us to make this year (which unfortunately I won’t be sharing , I also have financial goals to upgrade my wife’s van and pay cash for it. Purchase a different house, which we are in the process of selling ours right now. I want to give away at least 10% of our income, and also have $15,000 in savings for an emergency fund.
• Family – Having family goals is critically important as well so I have set goals to take a 5 night vacation with our family (probably a beach trip this summer) plus a 3 night vacation with just Sheila, which we actually already have booked. We will be going to Maui in February for our anniversary! Tying back into the financial side of things, we will of course pay cash for any vacation we take. In addition, I want to make sure I have a date night every week with Sheila, so that she still likes me. And I want to start taking my oldest daughter Sydnee (who will be 3 in April) on more dad/daughter dates.
• Personal – I guess this is somewhat of the catch-all for other goals I didn’t create a category for! Here’s the breakdown of those:

• Take 2 full days off every week – this will typically be the weekend, but there are a lot of weekends when I’m traveling, so it will be two other days during those weeks. This is a difficult one for me because I love what I get to do and because I work from the house, I really have to work to keep my home life separated from my business.
• Take 20 full vacation days – this of course does not include the 2 days a week that I’m off, but rather I equate this to 4 weeks of vacation time in a typical job setting.
• Develop a better daily and weekly routine/system – I consider myself a fairly organized and disciplined person, but there are always areas for improvement. Because I work for myself and work from the house, I have to continually work at developing a system to get things done and make things happen.
• Read 30 books for the year – I usually read between 30-50 books a year, so this will be a continuation of what I already try to do. I’ve heard it said before that the average millionaire reads a non-fiction book every month. If I want to be in their shoes someday, then I need to pay attention to what they do.
• Read through the Bible – This is more of a spiritual discipline and a great way to start my day. On a side note, I’m reading through the Message translation this year.

Another personal goal that I will be talking about further tomorrow is an idea I’m creatively calling “CHANGES.” Come back tomorrow for more info on it…

Related posts:

1. My Goals for 2009 – Part 1
2. My Goals for 2009 – Part 3
3. My Goals for 2009 – Part 2
4. 6 Ways To Make Your 2010 Goals Stick
5. A Few Updates…Part II